Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

19 Responses to “White House: A Better Bargain for the Middle Class: Jobs”

Obama is asking for trickle down.
GOP will demand a slice of New Deal sacrifice as a bribe.
Obama will offer a piece of FDR, JFK or LBJ … anything not his deeply flawed legacy.
GOP will refuse, then turn around saying they saved middle class from Obama threat.

Note that the tax rate cut would apply only to manufacturing, which is not defined. Of course there will be big arguements as to what manufacturing is. For example is a railroad a manufacturing organization? Let alone talk about Berkshire Hathaway, which has some manufacturing, but a lot of insurance, as well as a railroad. What rate would apply to them? Or take GE where GE would pay one rate for the manufacturing part and another for GE capital.

This Deja Vu message from FDR warning us about Obama, Rubin, and the new kind of “liberal’

“Let me warn you and let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion which says, “Of course we believe all these things; we believe in social security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present Administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them—we will do more of them, we will do them better; and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.”

“One of the cornerstones of the President’s plan to create a better bargain for the middle class is to ensure thatevery American who is willing to work for it will have the opportunity for a good job that pays good wages”

Stopped reading there. Holding aside that this fish hook has been dangled by every presidential candidate (primaries and general election) from both parties for my entire lifetime, I am still left to wonder whether the proposition is plausible or desirable.

Who measures “willing to work”?
Who defines what a “good job” is?
Who defines what “good wages” are?
Who enforces the guarantee, and by what means?

I’m sure this plan will go on to tell me it can all be done without any increased debt. No, the debt will be erased by growth. I’m also sure the important changes are projected to begin right after the next election cycle.

“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a few essential points … These slogans must be repeated until every last member of the public understands what you want him to understand.”
— From a basic text on government by one of the founders of modern political marketing (Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler)

That would be a tremendous mistake. Your vote is the only peaceful way to wrestle government back from those conspiring to take everything you have away from you. Apathy is the trap they set up for you to fall into. Too many Americans have died ensuring your right to choose a government that will serve you and their heirs. To honor and give meaning to their sacrifice you must exercise that right.

Could this be a 2nd term president who wants to leave a legacy, and overshadow the heretofore half-baked Obamacare? What’s different between this proposal and the fiscal offset Mr. Bernanke has pleaded for over the past 4 years? What more do you want? Please contribute to the conversation constructively. If you have criticisms, please include your solutions too.

C’mon, six years and Obama hasn’t lifted a finger….and what’s this, a tax reduction bill + “tax credits” + privatization and labeled as a “Jobs Bill”. Great, Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package was almost 70% tax cut, how’s that working out? Can’t we just exhume Milton Friedman’s body and drive a stake through it already?

We donate TRILLIONS in taxpayer collections to America’s biggest welfare cases…BIG BANKS, but Obama thinks we should “privatize” ownership of public infrastructure…great.

How about just closing the loopholes and then using the “windfall” to directly invest in stuff like the following. Automatic cars [I like the term better than driver-less], Development of highways that inductively deliver power through buried cable [which would pretty much eliminate internal combustion engines for daily commutes...also large lubrication and cooling systems that pollute...sorry car buffs], development of a true “light weight” rail system that gets away from the Oxcart/gravity model that limits speeds [see Europe's worst train crash] and can pass down existing thoroughfares on low cost elevated electrified track, Federal funds directed toward building out our in-antiquate inter-tubes. Apollo-like investment in a standard modular component LFTR, one that ships in parts that can be assembled in weeks…not years. Federal funds to “rationalize” cities devastated by the enactment of Friedman’s idiocy. Oh yeah, about 65% of the line losses of the electrical grid relate to a system that hasn’t been seriously updated in 60 years, so let’s rebuilt our existing infrastructure while we prepare for the future.

We need a FDR game plan…back to back with JFK vision, not what got with the Bush/Obama Administration…a Hoover ideology combined with Harding’s scandals. If you peel away the soothing tones of Obama, you have the same idiotic policies Bush had, cut away the noise and frills and there wasn’t a change of government 2008.

So just based on the comment trail, we should not vote again, believe nothng can change or be improved, not work with a set of goals to have the legislators craft the actual laws (which the Administration can not actually write) and blame the current fiasco upon one person, because he couldn’t do it himself? And to top it off, offer up only cynicism, negativiity, snide remarks, and false or misleading comments and mis-information.
We have the government we deserve, or at least most who comment on the internet…

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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